


Avarice

by disappointed



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: A lot of non-explicit sex, Alcohol Abuse, Crossposted from Livejournal, Debatable Infidelity, Emotional Abuse, Even more fashion, K-Pop Ficmix 2015, M/M, The Devil Wears Prada AU, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 14:03:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7271245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disappointed/pseuds/disappointed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jiyong knows what vices are. He has a lot of experience with them. He knows what it’s like when you can’t stay away from something: cigarettes, maybe, or caffeine, even though you know it’s destroying you. It’s starting to feel like Seungri is a vice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avarice

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Beautiful Mess](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/208738) by vvipforseungri. 



> This was originally written for [K-Pop Ficmix @ LJ](http://kpop-ficmix.livejournal.com) and reposted [here](http://terrours.livejournal.com/5571.html), as a remix of the fic stated above.
> 
> The tags pretty much cover all of the warnings.

Jiyong gets used to what four AM looks like out Seungri’s window.

He gets used to the volume of the ebb and flow of traffic on the street below Seungri's apartment, the particular sequence of buildings visible in the distance, the pattern of the moonlight filtering through the open slats of the window blinds to highlight scattered patches of the blankets draped over them. He gets used to the warmth of Seungri’s body beside his, the sound of Seungri’s breathing always slightly out of time with his own, the feeling of Seungri’s soft hair brushing his neck when Seungri rolls over in his sleep and nuzzles his way closer to Jiyong. He gets used to watching the neon red of the bedside clock count up to the next hour, minute by minute, shifting restlessly between sheets that are always a bit too starchy for his comfort.

It’s nothing like four AM out Jiyong’s own window, where the sky is closer and the city lights are brighter through the floor-to-ceiling glass; where there’s no one to be out of sync with, no neon red numbers approaching the socially acceptable point for the escape he doesn’t have to make. But somehow, four AM out Jiyong’s window becomes more and more of a rare occurrence.

Jiyong gets used to what four AM looks like out Seungri’s window. And slowly, he gets used to Seungri.

This is when he realises everything about Seungri is a mistake.

 

 

Jiyong could’ve avoided Seungri so easily. Seungri is just a cute blonde barista in a small coffee shop Jiyong stops into on his way to work on a frigid November morning, smiling at Jiyong so brightly that Jiyong finally has to ask what the hell he could be so damn happy about at eight in the morning on a Thursday.

"It’s my last day here," Seungri replies, still smiling. "I just got a job at an advertising firm. Now I'll be doing graphic design."

And it would be so very, very simple for Jiyong not to bring Seungri into his life. For instance, he could choose not to smile back. He could give Seungri his order in a detached monotone, not with a little upwards intonation inviting further conversation. He could go back to flipping through the glossy Sonia Rykiel lookbook in his hands, distracting himself with distorted variations on argyle and garish shades of mauve, instead of leaning on the counter and watching the smiling blonde barista make his coffee. He could say something besides, "You should celebrate your new job. Go out or something." He could say nothing at all. Or he could do absolutely anything besides scribble his number on a napkin, slide it across the counter to Seungri and say, "If you do decide to go out tonight, let me know."

But Jiyong doesn’t avoid Seungri, because Jiyong loves playing.

The problem is, Jiyong plays to win.

 

 

It’s part of a larger pattern of behaviour. Jiyong spends his days creating small universes, all of his own design. He begins with a concept – just a few words tossed at him by an art director in a meeting – and develops a plane of existence based on it. He populates these with people, overlays them with fabrics and fills them in with colours. He sets up the scenes, draping and arranging and tugging and tousling until he’s made the perfect split-second frame for the camera to capture: his own personal world, trapped inside one shiny page.

From _late fall. Edgy glamour. Feature Diane von Furstenberg_ , he creates a twisted forest with long-legged models as the trees, bent at unnatural angles and tangled in metallic scarves.

From _spring ready-to-wear. Light and airy. Feature Oscar de la Renta_ , he creates an idyllic meadow and places a girl in it, her lace dress blending into the mist like a gradient until she appears to be vanishing into it thread by thread.

From _resort. Black and white. Feature Marchesa_ , he creates a strikingly funeral-esque scene and somehow doesn’t get fired. 

When Jiyong’s work is done, his one-page worlds are shut between the covers of Runway Korea, the country’s top fashion magazine, and placed onto shelves all over the globe. There, they wait to be opened and pull unsuspecting interlopers down the rabbit hole. Inevitably, they will end up on countless lists of the year’s best fashion editorials. Jiyong’s team will groan, not entirely joking, that this isn’t enough compensation for putting up with Jiyong’s insatiable perfectionism.

But it’s undeniable. Jiyong is very good what he does. Jiyong is an expert at making something sick out of something beautiful, and convincing the world to love it.

 

 

Jiyong doesn’t expect much from Seungri: an awkward greeting that ends when Seungri runs out of words, a few drinks downed as punctuation for awkwardly constructed sentences, a little friction between them on the dance floor and a quick fuck back at Seungri’s place. The bare minimum. He meets Seungri at the bar of the small club Seungri picked; he’s generally late to things like this. 

“Hi,” Seungri says. Without his barista apron, he has a much more muscular body than Jiyong expected. His eyes are teasing, and they scan Jiyong just a little too slowly. Jiyong already wants to grab him by the hair and crush their mouths together. “Sorry I didn’t get you anything. I don’t know what you like to drink.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” says Jiyong, and pulls him to the dance floor. 

Seungri is a good dancer. He moves his hips like he knows he’s capable of driving Jiyong insane, and he is. They only make it in the door of Seungri’s apartment before Jiyong pins him to the wall and kisses him until they’re both breathless and clutching at each other’s hair and clothes.

“You still smell like coffee,” Jiyong says, when Seungri pulls away to fumble with his belt. It’s a pointless observation, but Seungri laughs.

“Hopefully I won’t have that problem as a graphic designer. Pixels don’t smell like anything.”

Seungri’s smile is mesmerising.

Jiyong shoves Seungri onto the bed so hard the frame slams into the wall, pinning Seungri’s arms over his head and straddling him. Seungri gasps Jiyong’s name like his voice was made to say it, and his body reacts to Jiyong’s touch like it was programmed to respond. Jiyong rides him fast and rough, leaving him grasping at the sheets and gripping Jiyong’s hips, then slips out the door fifteen minutes after Seungri falls asleep.

 

 

Jiyong never plans to see Seungri again. He discovered several heartbreaks ago that he likes loving much less than playing. He dismisses the notification from Seungri’s _thanks for last night_ text, and sets his phone back down amidst pencil sketches of thorny vines interspersed with printed pictures of ivy-coloured Louboutin pumps and scribbled notes reading _maybe some iron gates_. But when he sees its follow-up, _How should I celebrate my first day of freedom?_ he finds his finger hesitating over the notification.

No one has to know, Jiyong thinks.

He leaves Seungri’s apartment at 3AM with Seungri’s cologne mixed in with his own and a song ringing in his ears: _the hills have eyes, the hills have eyes_.

 

 

The project winding its way around Jiyong’s desk in a long chain of pencil thorns, red-heeled shoes and messy scrawls is an editorial called “midsummer, slightly vintage, feature Valentino”. These are the words of Teddy, the art director. Jiyong doesn’t like that working title very much, but he hasn’t got anything better.

Just outside his office door, his dangerously stressed assistant Hanbin is in the middle of an hour-long circular debate with his phone, attempting to track down a hat Queen Elizabeth II wore back in 1980 that Jiyong has decided is critical to the success of the project. By now, Hanbin’s impending mental breakdown is familiar background noise.

It stops abruptly when Seunghyun saunters in, shutting the door behind him. “Jiyong. You finally succeeded in getting me demoted.”

Jiyong looks up from the wrought iron gates he’s sketching and raises an eyebrow at Seunghyun, who has for some reason seen fit to barge into his office and disrupt his questionable productivity. Seunghyun’s hair has been freshly dyed toothpaste teal, and it clashes aggressively with his maroon suit. As a fellow stylist, he should really know better. “I didn’t do anything. And doing makeup for one editorial is not a permanent demotion.”

“It’s for _your_ editorial.”

“It wasn’t my fault.” Jiyong frowns. “Teddy said the last photoshoot you styled was, quote, “way too circus freak”. He tried to keep it from going in the magazine, but it had Hyuna in it, so Editor-in-Chief Yang made him put it back in.”

“They scorn that which they do not understand,” says Seunghyun, and trips over the Givenchy shoebox Jiyong sticks his foot around the desk to kick into his path. He pulls a chair up in front of Jiyong’s desk nonetheless. “So, what do you have?”

“Just this.” Jiyong shoves his mess of sketches, photos and notes across the desk. By now, the pencil thorns span three pages. Five different pictures of the same shoes are taped to them, along with Queen Elizabeth II and her hat. The scribbles fill every centimeter of the paper not already occupied with stream-of-consciousness observations.

“Hmm.” Seunghyun scans the pages, mimicking Jiyong’s earlier eyebrow raise. “This is completely incoherent. But I can still figure out what to do with it.”

“You’re the best. Sometimes,” Jiyong quickly amends. “Now get out of my office. And please, if you have to wear that suit with that hair, at least get a teal pocket square to tie things together.”

“Request denied.” Seunghyun kicks the shoebox back towards Jiyong as he gets up, heading for the door without moving the chair back to its original spot. “If you need me, I’ll be designing circus freak makeup to ruin your ideas.”

When Seunghyun opens the door, Hanbin is still on the phone. Judging by the quiver in his voice, he’s near tears. Jiyong gets the feeling they’re going to have to proceed without the hat.

 

 

“Stay here tonight.”

Seungri has an incredibly comfortable mattress, and the late Sunday morning sun coming in the window is shining just the right amount of warmth on Jiyong’s naked back. This is the only reason Jiyong is still here. It has nothing to do with Seungri’s fingers running through his hair, his head resting in Seungri’s lap. He doesn’t answer.

“Please, hyung?”

“I told you to stop acting formal. Just call me Jiyong,” Jiyong sighs.

Jiyong doesn’t want to stay. This thing – this unspoken arrangement they have – isn’t the type of thing where he stays. It’s the type of thing where he pulls his clothes back on as soon as they finish, and sticks a cigarette between his teeth on the way out so there will be no goodbye kiss. It’s the type of thing where there are no backwards glances, no _I’ll call you later_ , and definitely no staying.

“Jiyong, please stay.”

He’s already been here too long.

Seungri is pouting when Jiyong gets up, shaking the wrinkles out of his clothes as he gets dressed, but he doesn’t say anything else. He’ll figure it out eventually, Jiyong knows. He’ll get used to this, the fact that Jiyong doesn’t stay. Eventually, he’ll stop asking. They always do.

Seungri still tries to kiss him goodbye. He supposes there’s a learning curve. He lets Seungri do it, just this once, and puts the cigarette in his mouth after the door shuts behind him.

 

 

Seungri kisses him the next time, too. The learning curve must ascend a lot more slowly than Jiyong thought.

 

 

“Jiyong?” Seungri asks, during Jiyong’s fifth visit. He’s tracing patterns on Jiyong’s back with his finger, but the inefficiency of Seungri’s heater is the only reason he’s shivering. It’s the end of November, almost a month after the day they met. Somehow, the time passed without Jiyong noticing.

“Hm?”

“What’s your job like?”

“My job?” Jiyong rolls over to face him, and raises an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I mean, I was just wondering.” Seungri’s blonde hair is tousled from when Jiyong pulled it, red marks sucked all over his neck by Jiyong’s lips. He look good like this, and that’s the only reason Jiyong doesn’t tell him to shut up. “About where you work, what your apartment looks like, what you do for fun. If you have friends, or just a bunch of cats. I mean, you know all those things about me, but I don’t know anything about you.”

“You don’t have to,” says Jiyong, and kisses him so he won’t say anything else.

But when he leaves, on a whim, he puts a copy of his key on Seungri’s coffee table. He places a note beside it: _if you really want to know what my apartment looks like._

 

 

Runway Korea’s Editor-in-Chief Yang Hyunsuk could give his infamously vicious American counterpart, Miranda Priestly, a run for her money.

“I don’t like this,” he says, flipping through the bits and pieces of Jiyong’s inspiration collection and looking over his preliminary sketch. “Thorns are cliché. You used identical shoes two months ago. There’s too much green. That hat is old, not vintage. Everything on this paper is ugly. Start over.”

By now, Jiyong doesn’t even flinch as Hyunsuk tears up every last piece of his project and dumps them in a shredded pile on his desk. This is a normal part of the process; none of his initial ideas have ever survived unscathed. For that matter, neither have any of Hyunsuk’s staff. He rarely has anything nice to say to anyone. Once he told Jiyong that he hated the sound of his voice, and handed him a piece of tape to put over his mouth.

No one has ever seen the top of Hyunsuk’s head. Rumour has it that its existence is a myth. Today, it’s hidden inside a newsboy hat with a familiar tan, red and black striped pattern.

The devil wears Burberry.

“Those were awful,” Hyunsuk says, and gives Jiyong a look of deep displeasure. “Truly abysmal.”

Jiyong keeps his mouth shut. There’s tape holder within Hyunsuk’s reach, and he doesn’t want to risk it.

“Your main problem,” Hyunsuk says, indicating the heap of ripped paper, “Is that those are nothing. Your idea means nothing. No one will care about it, because you don’t.” He sifts through it until he finds the piece that contains the model’s head; Jiyong had left the face blank, and Hyunsuk shakes his head in disappointment. He slides it across the desk to Jiyong. “Draw someone you know. Draw someone you love. Draw someone you hate. Draw yourself. I don’t care. Just make this mean something. Because right now, it’s empty.”

Jiyong knows a lot of people. He doesn’t love anyone. He doesn’t hate anyone, either. But he does know a lot about himself. So he looks at the model’s blank face, and sifts around in the scraps for the rest of her body. He pieces it back together, holds it in place with tape, then picks up a pen.

From the door, Hyunsuk says, “By the way, your assistant Hongbin is incompetent. He’s wearing navy blue shoes. You should fire him. That’s all.”

By the time Jiyong looks up, Hyunsuk is already gone. It doesn’t really matter. Jiyong wouldn’t bother correcting him anyway.

 

 

 _Do you have plans tonight?_ Seungri’s text asks, three days after Jiyong’s last visit.

 _Yes_ , Jiyong replies. After a moment of hesitation he adds, _But you can come with me_.

 

 

The club he brings Seungri to is beneath a hotel in Gangnam, three levels of light and noise and buzz. People are packed in tightly; Girl’s Generation is here tonight, and the number of people willing to pay the exorbitant cover charge for the chance to get a glimpse of them is apparently pretty high. It’s a struggle to make his way through the crowd to the VIP area upstairs, where the rest of their party is waiting.

Jiyong is sweating by the time he opens the door to the private room Teddy reserved. “Shit,” he says, taking a deep breath now that he has space to. “We picked a bad night to come.”

The door shuts behind him. The rest of the group is already here. Teddy, Seunghyun, and Youngbae are interspersed between their guests: Goo Hara, the lead actress from KBS’s current top-rated drama; Jessica Jung, the head designer for a new brand called BLANC & ECLARE that’s really taking off; and a gorgeous model named Lee Chaerin who’s just been named the face of Chanel’s new Korean campaign. He’s impressed; Teddy’s turned out quite a crowd. He flashes the room a winning smile. “Hi.”

“Ah, Jiyong. You’re unfashionably late,” Seunghyun says. Jiyong places himself on the white leather sofa beside him anyway, reaching for the drink Youngbae slides to him across the table. “Weren’t you bringing a date?”

 _This_ is when Jiyong becomes aware that Seungri’s not with him anymore.

He reaches into his pocket, planning to text Seungri a quick _Where are you??_ , but his hand fumbles between two phones. Right. He still has Seungri’s phone; he picked it up off the floor of the taxi on their way out of it. Seungri had knocked it off the seat beside him when Jiyong pulled him in for a heated kiss, murmuring against his mouth, _you look so good_. Seungri had let Jiyong dress him tonight, finally agreeing to wear some of the clothes Jiyong’s snobbish stylist sensibilities had been dying to put him in for weeks, and Jiyong dressed him exclusively in things he wanted to rip off of him later. Jiyong retracts his hand.

And he thinks, maybe he should go look for Seungri. But immediately, he knows that’s out of the question. It’s too crowded in this club; he’d never find Seungri amidst the wall-to-wall groups of girls in fifteen centimeter heels, and the boys hoping to bring them home. And it’s horrible, but a little part of him is thinking, _Seungri doesn’t belong here_. Not in a VIP room in the trendiest club in Gangnam, with stylists and actresses and designers and models. Seungri isn’t anyone. Not to them, and not to Jiyong. This isn’t a place for some no-name boy toy Jiyong fucks when he’s bored.

What was he thinking anyway, bringing Seungri? He must be losing his judgement.

“Jiyong,” Seunghyun says, snapping him back to the present. “Did you forget your date somewhere?”

“He couldn’t make it,” says Jiyong.

 

 

Seungri is naive.

It’s not like Jiyong didn’t know – had been pretending he didn’t know, maybe – but it’s painfully clear when he looks up at the sound of the door opening and Seungri is standing in the doorway, looking stricken.

The expression on his face is almost comical; an exaggerated mask, halfway to the frozen visages in a Greek tragedy. And it should sicken Jiyong that he can find any humour in this – dark humour, really – but it’s evident in his voice when he says, “Seungri? What are you doing here?”

 _Here_ is Jiyong’s bedroom. Dim lighting casts a sensual glow over the scene: Jiyong in bed under a pretty model he met at the release party for BLANC  & ECLARE’s new handbag line, and by nine had lured out into the light snow of the early December night with one simple line: _come home with me_. Her cashmere coat is draped neatly over Jiyong’s desk chair, silk Chanel scarf tucked carefully into the sleeve. Jiyong’s suit is thrown haphazardly on the carpet beside it.

Seungri is choking back _tears_. This is so much more dramatic than Jiyong had expected.

The model gasps, throwing back the covers and sliding off the side of the bed, pulling the upper half of her cocktail dress back on as she goes. She snatches up her coat so hastily the scarf falls out of the sleeve, and pushes Seungri aside as she hurries out of the room too quickly to notice. The back of her dress is still unzipped, bra unclasped; this should sicken Jiyong too, the way he thinks that these are the details he would style her with if he had to create a scene called _Betrayal_.

The expression on her face was mortified panic. The expression on Seungri’s is devastated. The expression on Jiyong’s is blank.

Stunning performances from the whole cast.

“Really, Jiyong?” Seungri’s voice is almost a whisper. “Really?”

Seungri is so naive.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

But Jiyong does. Boys like Seungri always think this means something. They think a few passionate encounters and occasional brief morning-afters are reason enough to get starry-eyed. Jiyong knows all about boys like Seungri. He used to be one a long time ago, several heartbreaks back. And he knows that the hearts of boys like Seungri are easy to break.

Poor naive Seungri. The tears he’s choking on are suffocating him. There’s a little tremble in his hands, an almost imperceptible quiver in his bottom lip, but Jiyong knows about boys like Seungri. He knows what they look like when their hearts break. Jiyong steadily holds his gaze.

“Well, if you’re here, you might as well stay.” Jiyong indicates the bed beside him. There’s an empty space now, after all, and Jiyong wasn’t planning on being alone tonight.

“I just came to get my wallet,” Seungri says. His voice is empty. All his emotions have migrated to his eyes, his mouth, his hands and his heart. “I left it here this morning. You didn’t answer my texts.”

Jiyong saw them, sort of. He didn’t read them. They popped up on his phone screen as he was checking the time, calculating whether he had been at the party long enough not to seem rude if he left with the model that was clearly giving him suggestive glances over her champagne glass. He dismissed the notifications, and didn’t think of them again.

“I didn’t get them,” he says. It sounds like as much of a lie as it is.

Seungri walks by Jiyong’s bed without giving him another look, reaching over the chair the model’s jacket had been laid over and picking his wallet up from the desk. “Good night, Jiyong,” he says, and shuts the bedroom door behind him. Jiyong expects the front door to slam, but it doesn’t.

This will be the last he sees of Seungri, he expects. He doesn’t mind. By now, it’s just part of the cycle. The natural order of things. No one stays for very long.

And he enjoyed Seungri; he really did. Seungri was pliable and amenable and satisfactorily acquiescent. But eventually, his time would have run out. From the start, his days had been numbered. Jiyong plays, not loves, and he wouldn’t let anyone stay for very long anyway.

This is the last he’ll see of Seungri, he expects. That’s how it always is.

He’s wrong.

 

 

He’s fine with Seungri sticking around, really. The only thing he likes more than playing is hurting.

 

 

He ends up calling his project “Poison Ivy”. The iron gates were all Hyunsuk would let him keep. The final version of the project is a woman in a tight white dress leaning up against those gates, a mansion with a manicured lawn and a fountain in the distance. Long vines of poison ivy are wrapped around her like a hug, twisting and twining up from the ground to hold her. But afterwards, Jiyong knows, pink would stain her skin in the places the leaves touch. The gentle embrace of the ivy would leave a painful impact that wouldn’t fade for a long time. It would be a shame, Jiyong thinks.

But for now, all people will see is the beauty. They won’t think about the aftermath until a little later, and then that will mar it for them. 

Jiyong hopes it does. Poison Ivy has become one of his favourite projects. He did draw himself and someone he knows, after all.

 

 

It’s been almost two months now. Two months since the day Jiyong met Seungri, and one month since Seungri met the person Jiyong really is. Jiyong should’ve stopped finding himself in Seungri’s bed all the way back then, when they both had the perfect opportunity to go their separate ways, but Seungri is so naive. He should've run when he had the chance. Instead, three days afterwards, he asked Jiyong to come over. He kissed Jiyong on the lips, looking at him like he'd come to an understanding, and never brought it up again. 

Things start to change after that.

It's almost imperceptible. It happens so gradually that Jiyong almost misses it. But little by little, something between them shifts.

Everything about Seungri is a mistake. None of this should be happening: Jiyong in Seungri’s lap, pinning him down on the sofa an hour before a meeting, sucking on his bottom lip with the full knowledge that he’ll be late. Or Jiyong kissing his way down Seungri’s neck, knowing with every one of Seungri’s soft sighs that he’ll be cancelling his plans tonight. Or Jiyong pressing his mouth to Seungri’s and licking at his tongue, Seungri’s hand pushed into his hair, thinking that no one who’s ever kissed him has done it with the same determination Seungri does.

None of these things should be happening. But they do, again and again.

When it becomes less like playing, Jiyong knows it's time for the game to end.

He starts setting deadlines. In a week, he'll leave. In a week, he'll pause halfway out the door and tell Seungri, _I'm not coming back._ And when he misses that deadline, he sets another. Then another. But every time, the deadlines pass. For someone whose life revolves around deadlines, Jiyong is having a disproportionate amount of trouble sticking to these ones. 

Because it always happens like this: Seungri will smile, say something pointless that makes Jiyong laugh despite himself, then brush Jiyong’s hair back from his face and tell him to come over again tomorrow. And deep down, Jiyong will know Seungri’s just bought himself another week. 

Seungri still kisses Jiyong on the nights he’s still awake when Jiyong leaves. Jiyong has begun to consider the possibility that the learning curve is actually a parabola. Because the longer Jiyong sticks around, the more Seungri seems to forget what he’s learnt about the impossible art of keeping his heart intact while loving Jiyong. And Jiyong starts to think there's a lot he's forgetting, too.

 

 

The morning of the editorial shoot, everything goes wrong.

Seunghyun’s assistant Mino collides with Daesung, the photographer, and the resulting fall sprains Daesung’s wrist. Youngbae, the hairstylist, shows up forty-five minutes late with an excuse that none of them really buy. Teddy appears at the last minute to veto Seunghyun’s makeup, making him wipe an hour’s worth of work off the model’s face and improvise a whole new look. But by far, the worst of the disasters is Jiyong.

Jiyong can barely keep his eyes open. His head is throbbing, and there’s a terrible feeling in his stomach. He misplaces the model’s shoes, leaving Mino to run around the entire building looking for them, and nearly burns the one-of-a-kind Valentino dress while trying to iron out the wrinkles that found their way into it on the flight from Milan. Hanbin appears almost instantly to remove the iron from Jiyong’s hands, and seamlessly takes over the task.

Jiyong drifts aimlessly around the set, getting the model’s hair caught in the fake poison ivy vines while attempting to wrap them around her. Seunghyun steps in disentangle her and finish draping them, while Jiyong downs painkillers with three cups of black coffee and tries to snap himself out of the way he’s nearly dead on his feet. All he can do is stand back and watch as everything moves around him, all the pieces of the puzzle clicking together, fitting into their places much more neatly without Jiyong’s interference. He feels lost. He watches Seunghyun fit into the puzzle in the space he should be, and with his space taken, he doesn't know where to go. Seunghyun steps out of the action for a moment to pull Jiyong aside when Jiyong tries to find himself a different place in the puzzle and instead drops a large box of antique necklaces, sending them scattering across the floor. The gold chains jangle horribly against the tile, and strings of pearls roll to a stop at Seunghyun's feet. “Jiyong, what the hell is going on? Are you even awake? You look tired.” 

It’s the understatement of the century. 

“I am,” says Jiyong.

The truth is he let himself into Seungri’s apartment at five in the morning, much more drunk than he should’ve been, crawling on top of Seungri in bed and waking him up by grinding their hips together. He pressed messy kisses to Seungri’s neck as Seungri groaned _no, Jiyong, I need to sleep, I have work tomorrow_ , but Seungri relented in the end. He always does. Jiyong left directly for the shoot without any sleep, hangover rapidly creeping up on him, thinking _this needs to stop_. The problem is, time and time again, he's failed.

Jiyong knows what vices are. He has a lot of experience with them. He knows what it’s like when you can’t stay away from something: cigarettes, maybe, or caffeine, even though you know it’s destroying you.

It’s starting to feel like Seungri is a vice.

 

 

Jiyong hates Yang Hyunsuk’s office.

His hatred is justified. It’s rare that anyone is called in here for a positive reason. The walls of the office are covered in mirrors, reflecting back the unlucky visitor’s face from all their most unflattering angles, and giving the illusion of an even bigger space. The overall effect is terribly imposing. Standing in front of Hyunsuk’s desk, under his beady-eyed scrutiny, is a truly nerve-wracking experience.

Hyunsuk’s hat is leather today.

The devil wears Gucci.

“You are very, very lucky,” Hyunsuk is saying, tapping a silver pen on his desk. “Do you know how lucky you are?”

Jiyong doesn’t answer. He’s learnt by now that the vast majority of what Hyunsuk says is rhetorical; he would be dangerously irritated by a response.

“You’re lucky you’re so talented,” Hyunsuk says, still tapping his pen, “that I don’t want any other magazine to have you.”

Jiyong doesn’t thank him for the compliment. He’s learnt by now that Hyunsuk doesn’t mean it as one.

“Because if that weren’t the case,” Hyunsuk continues, “I would fire you on the spot.”

He drops his pen. It clatters on the desk. Jiyong lowers his eyes to the floor.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” A note of disdain enters Hyunsuk’s voice. “Aren’t you embarrassed about such an unprofessional display? Didn’t it bother you at all, seeing your assistant fixing your mistakes? Seeing your _assistant_ doing your job better than you? If I were in your place, I wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye.”

At this moment, Jiyong wouldn’t be able to look _anyone_ in the eye.

“And Seunghyun,” Hyunsuk continues. “Seunghyun had to take over _your_ shoot. That wasn’t his job. _You_ were meant to be in charge. _He_ was meant to be the one listening to _you_. And to think, Teddy thought you were more capable than him.” Hyunsuk shakes his head. “He was wrong.”

Jiyong doesn’t say anything. He knows Hyunsuk doesn’t want him to. But even if he did, Jiyong has nothing to say.

“You’re lucky. You’re very, very lucky,” Hyunsuk says. “Don’t do this again, or your luck will run out.”

There’s a copy of the newly completed January magazine open on Hyunsuk’s desk. It’s open to a page that Jiyong knows all too well, burned into his mind after the five hours he stared at it, waiting for it to sink in. A woman leaning against wrought iron gates, caught in the embrace of long strands of green vines. A mansion with a fountain in the background. And beneath the woman, at the bottom of the page, seven words:

_Editorial: Poison Ivy  
Styled by: Choi Seunghyun_

Hyunsuk waves his hand at Jiyong to dismiss him. “That’s all.”

Jiyong leaves Hyunsuk’s office with his cheeks burning in humiliation. He slams his office door in Hanbin’s face when Hanbin tries to follow him in. At his desk, he lowers his head into his hands and takes a deep breath.

This has to stop, he thinks, for what must be the thousandth time. This thing with Seungri – whatever it is – has gone too far. Because Jiyong plays; he doesn’t love. And this thing is getting dangerously close to blurring that line. _Seungri_ is getting dangerously close to blurring that line. So once and for all, this game needs to end.

 

 

It doesn’t.  
  
  
  
  
  
  


△

 

 

 

 

 

Jiyong _really_ hates Hyunsuk’s office. Somehow, it’s never gotten more bearable with time. The mirrored walls reflect back a condensed image of all Jiyong’s flaws: the dark circles under his eyes, the tiny blemishes on his cheek, the three kilograms of weight he’s lost in the two months since the last time he was here. The salmon pink hair he let Youngbae try out on him is making him look a lot more washed out than he expected. Maybe the reason he hates Hyunsuk’s mirrors so much is they show him everything he tries so hard not to see.

“Jiyong. I have a proposal for you,” says Hyunsuk, in the kind of tone that slithers through the air like invisible tendrils. It’s the same tone he uses to fire his assistants. Jiyong swallows hard, and the breath in his lungs gets stuck in his throat on its way back out of them. Hyunsuk’s eyes are fixed on him intently, unreadable, shadowed beneath the brim of his grey tweed hat.

The devil wears Dolce & Gabbana.

“I’m sure you remember your last assignment.”

Jiyong does. It would be difficult to forget.

“I thought long and hard about it. What to do with you after that.”

Since that humiliating disaster, Jiyong has been relegated to pulling clothes for Seunghyun. Sometimes he gets to choose accessories, if he’s lucky. Most of the time, he’s not. He stayed behind at his desk in Seoul while Seunghyun went to Paris Fashion Week, dutifully scrolling through pictures online to find the royal blue Dries Van Noten jacket that Seunghyun ordered him to call immediately for. He’s become, in essence, a glorified assistant. An irrelevant job title and a few pitying looks from the other stylists are all that separate him from Mino. These days, he doesn’t have enough responsibilities to delegate any of them. He sends Hanbin out for coffee five times a day just to give him something to do.

“I considered doing nothing at all.”

Hyunsuk gets up from his desk and paces back and forth in front of the large windows, against the backdrop of the high-rise buildings surrounding the office. Jiyong knows Hyunsuk well; he knows what Hyunsuk’s doing. Hyunsuk is leaving a deliberate empty space between words, expecting Jiyong to fill it with worst-case scenario thoughts. And, falling right into the trap, Jiyong does. Knowing Hyunsuk’s game doesn’t make Hyunsuk any less skilled at playing it.

Hyunsuk lets ten different worst-case scenarios play out in Jiyong’s mind in excruciating detail before he stops pacing and turns to face him. “But I’ve decided to give you another chance.”

Jiyong feels like the tendrils have slithered into his chest and stopped his heart.

“I’ll let you create an editorial for the April magazine,” Hyunsuk says. “I’ll let you do your job. And if you prove to me that you’re still fit to do it, then you can have it back. We’ll put all this behind us. How does that sound?”

It sounds like the only thing Jiyong has going for him at the moment.

“I’m glad you agree.” Hyunsuk waves his hand to dismiss Jiyong, but then stops him in the doorway. He’s always had a flair for the dramatic. “Don’t forget, Jiyong: this is your second chance, but if you disappoint me again, it will also be your last.” He turns back to the windows, bearing an uncanny figurative resemblance to the high-rise buildings outside. “That’s all.”

 

 

Jiyong takes this assignment as full permission to lose his mind.

He throws himself into it with a single-minded focus that manifests sometimes as genius, but usually as madness. In his better days, he was an insatiable perfectionist; these days, he’s just insatiable. He turns out design after design, trying out concept after concept, then rips them all up because they’re good.

 _Good_ is not going to save him. _Good_ is not enough. _Good_ , right now, is the worst possible thing.

It becomes Hanbin’s full-time job to catch things Jiyong throws. Jiyong throws crumpled papers, dull pencils, pens with the wrong kind of ink. He throws notebooks, sketchpads, pages ripped out of newspapers, classic novels with yellowed pages and fragile bindings. He throws coffee cups, soju bottles, cigarette packs, empty plastic packages from caffeine pills. At one point, he throws a shoe. Hanbin weighs the risks, opts to save himself and dives out of the way. The heel of the shoe breaks when it hits the door, but Jiyong doesn’t hold it against him.

Eventually, he throws his phone. Hanbin lunges for it before it hits the ground, barely catching it on the tips of his fingers. It’s still ringing when he tries to hand it back to Jiyong, but Jiyong shakes his head. “Reject that call. Just … reject it.”

Jiyong was wrong. The worst possible thing right now isn’t _good_. It’s Seungri.

It was Seungri that made everything fall apart last time. Seungri is his vice. Jiyong knows that now. He isn’t going to make the same mistake again.

He tells Hanbin to keep his phone. He tells Hanbin to reject calls, delete texts and erase voicemails. To go back through everything, as far back as last November, and get rid of anything with Seungri’s name. Jiyong never tells him why, and Hanbin never asks. He wouldn’t have to, even if he wanted to; everything he deletes pieces together into the whole story. But Jiyong gets the feeling that, probably a long time ago, Hanbin had already guessed.

 

 

After five days, Jiyong looks down at his desk, and then he has it.

He calls it “Crooked”.

After that point, everything falls into place. All the clothes he chooses arrive within a week, the perfect model takes an hour to find and Jiyong throws around threats so vicious that no one dares to show up to the shoot late. The finished product is everything he wanted, but could never put into words.

He's changed his mind. This one is his favourite.

 

 

Right before the April issue of the magazine is released, Jiyong is called into Hyunsuk’s office.

He stands before the mirrors more confidently this time. They reflect the dark circles under his eyes that have exponentially deepened, the ashen tone of his skin, the additional two kilograms he’s lost. For the first time, Jiyong doesn’t care. He knows what he is. He’s finally accepted that he’s everything he doesn’t want to see. The mirrors don’t scare him anymore.

A copy of the magazine is laying on Hyunsuk’s desk. It’s open to a page that, this time, Jiyong isn’t ashamed to see.

“Congratulations, Jiyong,” says Hyunsuk, and for the first time in months, gives him a short nod of approval. “This might be your best work so far.” 

This time, Jiyong actually answers. “Thank you.”

Hyunsuk’s face has the closest thing to a smile Jiyong’s ever seen on it. ”You did well. You’ve really turned things around.” He closes the magazine, and hands it to Jiyong. “Whatever you did, it worked. Keep it up.”

 

 

Jiyong tries.

 

 

He can't.

 

 

Seungri must really hate himself.

Jiyong called him at five-thirty after three weeks of pretending he didn’t exist, and here he is, beneath Jiyong in bed. Jiyong would say it’s loyal, maybe obedient, maybe masochistic, but it’s something more than that. He looks at Seungri, his long eyelashes and smooth skin and soft lips parted in a little gasp, and wonders why someone like Seungri would hate himself enough to keep sleeping with Jiyong.

Seungri looks different than the first day Jiyong met him. Jiyong remembers the cute, smiling barista, looking so innocent and full of possibilities. Seungri looks tired now, somehow weathered, and Jiyong would think it’s his new job, but it’s been long enough that he he knows it’s not.

Jiyong must really hate himself to keep sleeping with Seungri.

He must truly enjoy coming face-to-face with what a monster he is.

 

 

After seeing enough pictures of models, they begin to look interchangeable. High cheekbones, sharp jaw, jutting collarbones, vacant stares. Sometimes a peek of the deep ridges between their ribs. Beautiful coat hangers.

Nothing like Seungri.

Jiyong finds himself imagining Seungri’s face in the pictures – his thick eyebrows, the bags under his eyes, the slightly crooked bridge of his nose. He pictures Seungri’s body in the clothes – his broad shoulders, his solid biceps, the defined muscles of his chest. He tries to shake off the image, to focus on the long neck and translucent eyelashes and button nose of the Ukranian boy in the picture in front of him, appreciating the crisp seams and boxy shoulders of the androgynous grey jacket he’s modelling. But his eyes are dead, and he can’t stop thinking about how Seungri’s eyes are so alive. How they look at Jiyong like they’re living just for him.

He can’t stop thinking about Seungri.

On the catwalk, the models are dynamic. Jiyong goes to a show in China for an obscure designer that has a decent chance of breakout success, hoping a glimpse of the models’ personalities will make him forget. The way they walk like they command something, their arms swinging just enough to give them a sense of momentum without being cartoonish, the way they demand the attention of everyone in the room with each pose. In person, they can’t be Seungri; they’re nothing like mannequins. But no matter how alive their bodies are, their eyes are still empty.

He points this out to Seunghyun, who’s sitting beside him. “Don’t they look kind of soulless?” he murmurs behind his hand.

“To be fair, Jiyong, you do too sometimes,” Seunghyun replies.

Jiyong spends the rest of the show wondering what the hell Seunghyun means. But he thinks maybe he doesn’t really want to know, and so he doesn’t ask.

 

 

Jiyong would like to turn Seungri into an editorial.

He doesn’t want to pick Seungri out, give him to Seunghyun and Youngbae to transform, then hand him over to Daesung to photograph; no, he wants to do it himself. He wants to sit Seungri down in the stylist’s chair and paint over the parts of him he doesn’t like, covering up the little flaws that only he looks closely enough to see. He wants to dress Seungri up in clothing he knows Seungri would never wear, and style his hair in a way Seungri hates. He wants to make his perfect version of Seungri and put him under the bright lights of the photo studio, in front of a blank white screen that accentuates everything about him perfectly. He wants to move Seungri’s arms and legs, turn his head, fix his eyes on Jiyong, contort and twist and bend him like a doll, and tell him, _don’t move. Look at me_.

He wants to capture that perfect Seungri, everything about him just the way Jiyong wants it to be. Maybe if he could see Seungri like that, that perfect glossy airbrushed version, he could understand why Seungri’s face fills his mind until he can think of nothing else.

And then, Jiyong wants to close that one-page world between the covers of a magazine and put it on a shelf. He wants to trap Seungri there on the page, nothing but ink and paper. Nothing that could ever hurt him. Maybe, in one-dimensional print, Seungri would become like the other models. Interchangeable. A beautiful coat hanger. A vacant stare in empty eyes. Jiyong could swap him out with anyone else at any given moment and feel nothing. He could close the pages and forget about him. Or maybe, if he couldn't forget, he could tear Seungri up and finally be free.

 

 

Jiyong allows himself three minutes this time. Three minutes to lay in Seungri’s arms, letting Seungri hold him like they have any chance of loving each other. But three minutes is long enough; probably too long, after the way he whispered _I need you_ against Seungri’s mouth and kissed him desperately enough to let Seungri know he meant it. His hair is a mess, fringe falling into his eyes, and the aircon raises goosebumps on his bare skin as he breaks free of Seungri’s grasp and gets out of bed. His clothes are draped over Seungri’s desk, tossed haphazardly there almost as soon as he got in the door, and he shakes the wrinkles out of his trousers as he picks them up.

“Don’t go.”

Jiyong wonders if Seungri can see the way it takes him three tries to get the metal fastener of his belt in the right hole, fingers fumbling with the art of making haste look casual.

“What?”

“Don’t go.”

Seungri looks as low as Jiyong feels. It’s sick, but he feels something like satisfaction. Seeing Seungri lying there alone on the bed, curled in on himself with the confidence drained out of his pleading eyes, Jiyong is satisfied that he’s broken Seungri. Seungri is so beautiful and Jiyong wants to look at him, to appreciate the way he’s still wearing nothing but the sheets pulled just above his waist, to appreciate how small and pitiful he looks, but he knows the helpless look in Seungri’s eyes will make him hesitate and so he doesn’t.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“It’s storming outside.”

“You’re over-exaggerating.”

Seungri isn’t. A splitting flash of lightning illuminates the room with a brief, eerie glow. The excuse is so blatant it’s ridiculous. But Jiyong has to pretend to believe his own deception, no matter how transparent, or it will all fall apart. He's become a master of that by now; he's been doing it all along. Outside the window, another round of thunder rumbles through the sky.

“That was thunder and lightning, Jiyong. It’s dangerous.”

What’s dangerous is the way Jiyong wants, more than anything, to crawl back into bed and fall asleep in Seungri’s arms. What’s dangerous is that, even though he’s always liked hurting and playing more than loving, he just keeps playing even when it’s crossing over into loving and it’s hurting him too.

“It’s only a bit of rain.”

Jiyong can pinpoint the exact moment Seungri gives up.

And it’s so fucked up, because he needs Seungri, but more than that he needs to know that Seungri needs him. It’s control, Seungri’s helpless look as he watches Jiyong leave, unable to make him stay no matter how hard he tries. And it’s control, when Jiyong actually manages to pull himself away.

He’s losing his mind. This isn’t control; this is a weak grasp for it. If he were in control he could’ve stayed there, slept there beside Seungri, and felt nothing.

He focuses on that helpless, hurt look in Seungri’s eyes because it makes him feel like maybe he’s not the one who lost this time.

Deep down he knows they’re both losing, again and again and again. But Jiyong just keeps playing the game.

 

 

The radio signal in the car is three-quarters static, made almost unrecognisable by the storm, but Jiyong catches bits and pieces of a familiar song:

_I only call you when it’s half-past five, the only time that I’ll be by your side_  
_I only love it when you touch me, not feel me_  
_When I’m fucked up that’s the real me, yeah_

 

 

Without any resistance, Jiyong lets work devour him again. It’s not difficult to be swallowed up. It’s also not like he has much of a choice.

Seunghyun quit in the second week of May, moving to a significantly higher salary at Elle Korea. Jiyong feels betrayed at first, but brushes it off. That’s the way it always works in this industry: you take whatever opportunity comes along to rise up the ranks, hoping to someday reach the top. He doesn’t blame Seunghyun. He would probably do the same.

With Seunghyun gone, all of his work falls upon Jiyong. Hyunsuk won’t have it any other way; most of the other stylists have fallen out of his incredibly fickle favour, and his perfectionism has caused him to reject every single candidate that could be Seunghyun’s replacement. Everything becomes a frenzied rush as Jiyong races against time to finish three photoshoots, create two editorials, design red carpet looks for four actresses who have been nominated at various award shows and make public appearances at any function Hyunsuk determines his presence is required at. He has Hanbin working twenty-hour days beside him, running on caffeine pills and adrenaline, making frantic calls all around the globe to obtain every piece of clothing and jewellery Jiyong demands. He borrows Mino, saving him from being sacked, and Mino becomes his link to the outside world. Jiyong doesn’t really leave the office anymore.

Two weeks go by, then three. He lets Seungri’s texts sit unread in his message inbox, and lets Seungri’s calls go to voicemail. It’s like March all over again. He gets the feeling this is a cycle they’re falling into. He only picks up once, in a late night moment of weakness.

“Jiyong.” Seungri’s voice is relieved. “I’m glad to hear you’re alive.”

“Okay.”

There’s a long silence. A full minute goes by before Seungri asks, “Don’t you miss me at all?”

Jiyong hangs up, and doesn’t answer again.

Eventually, Hyunsuk replaces Seunghyun with a slightly spacey woman named Bom who previously worked for Marie Claire UK, but has come directly to Korea from a one-week stint at the American edition of Runway. One week was all she could stand. Her cherry red hair sits almost directly across the colour wheel from Seunghyun’s favourite shade of toothpaste teal, but her stories about her five hellish encounters with Miranda Priestly make Jiyong laugh. He hands Mino over to her, not a moment too soon for the fragile remainder of Mino’s sanity, and chain-smokes half a pack of cigarettes outside in the fresh air and direct sunlight for what feels like the first time in years.

Hyunsuk gives Jiyong two days off, an unprecedented occurrence for anyone who has ever worked in this pressure-cooker hell. He nearly sprints out of Hyunsuk’s office before Hyunsuk can change his mind, and sleeps for twelve hours straight. But after twelve hours, Jiyong doesn’t know what to do with the time he has to breathe again.

Within thirty-six hours, he finds himself on the way to Seungri’s.

This is all just part of the cycle.

 

 

But then Jiyong breaks the cycle.

He stays.

 

 

Jiyong knows all too well what four AM looks like through Seungri’s window. Eight AM is an entirely different experience. It’s somehow idyllic; the noise of the street below has a steadier rhythm, the lights of the surrounding buildings are illuminated and there’s a peaceful look on Seungri’s face that Jiyong hasn’t seen in a long time. He doesn’t know if he likes it or not.

He needs a cigarette so badly.

Leaving is a familiar process. It’s automatic by now: the search for his clothes, the quick pat-down of his pockets for his keys and his phone, the urge to look back that he always ignores. What’s not automatic is the way he hesitates at the door to the balcony on his way out. It _should_ be automatic to keep walking, to shut the front door behind him, to leave no indication that he was ever here. No indication that he ever wanted to be. But somewhere along the line, Jiyong’s autopilot turned off.

He leaves the balcony door open behind him, letting the warm May air into Seungri’s perfectly temperate apartment as he lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. There are some nerves the nicotine soothes. There are others it doesn’t.

It feels somehow inevitable when he hears Seungri’s footsteps behind him.

“Jiyong?” Seungri says. He sounds as surprised by this turn of events as Jiyong feels. Jiyong pictures an exaggerated Greek drama mask on his face. “I thought you would’ve – would’ve gone to work by now.”

They both know Seungri really means, _I thought you would’ve already left_.

“It’s Sunday,” Jiyong says.

“Oh.”

The silence stretches on for so long that, travelling at the speed of light, it could’ve already reached the sun. Seungri hangs back, like he’s not sure how to approach Jiyong, and that’s fine. Jiyong’s not sure how to approach Seungri either. Not sure if he even wants to. He finishes one cigarette, and reaches into his pocket for another.

On his third cigarette, Seungri comes up beside him. He follows Jiyong’s gaze, looking down at the street beneath them, watching the same ebb and flow of traffic they always hear at night. In the morning, the pattern is different.

Travelling in the opposite direction, the speed-of-light silence could’ve been halfway to Jupiter.

Jiyong wonders if he’s made this seem like a peace offering, cigarette smoke clouding the clear morning air like sacrificial incense. He didn’t intend to, but telling that to Seungri would mean he’d have to admit the thought crossed his mind. So he remains silent, continuing to watch the ebb and flow until the speed-of-light silence could have breached Jupiter’s atmosphere.

“If you want,” Seungri says, hesitating, like he’s afraid to push things too far, “you can stay for breakfast.”

Jiyong taps the ash off his cigarette, dragging it out for much longer than he has to. “I have things to do.”

“Oh.”

Seungri doesn’t sound disappointed anymore. He doesn’t sound like anything at all. He leans off the railing, turning back towards the door. “I’ll see you later, Jiyong.”

It doesn’t occur to Jiyong until much later that it may have been a question.

 

 

Jiyong spends several days sketching the galaxy. He fills it with stars, then adds in the helpless moons and planets pulled into orbit around them. Each time, he spaces the stars and the moons a little further apart. In the end, he can’t figure out anything to turn the drawings into, and throws them all out.

 

 

Jiyong gets Seungri’s text, _Can I come over?_ right before he falls into bed with tonight’s girl. She’s an up-and-coming actress, one he’s styling a photoshoot for in the August issue of the magazine, and couldn’t resist inviting out for drinks afterwards. And similarly, he can’t keep himself from replying with _yes_ before he puts his phone on silent and drops it on top of the pile of discarded clothes on the floor beside the bed. He forgets about it as soon as she straddles him, dragging her nails down his chest, and loses himself in the soft curves of her body.

They take longer than he expected, losing track of time somewhere around the point where she peels off her lacy red panties and gets on top of him. And it’s not until she’s rolling over, slipping those panties back on, that Jiyong remembers: _Seungri_.

He dresses as quickly as she does, checking his phone immediately afterwards, and hates himself.

_Jiyong?_

_Why aren’t you answering the door?_

_Are you not home yet?_

Seungri doesn’t let himself in anymore, not after the first and last time he walked in on something like this. The first and last texts are spaced apart by ten minutes. Jiyong hopes Seungri has given up and left.

He walks the actress to the door and kisses her up against it for a full thirty seconds before he swings it open. Seungri is leaning against the wall outside, one foot up against it, typing out another text. The way his eyes light up when the door opens only makes it a hundred times worse when it fades as the actress walks out, her black Miu Miu pumps clicking all the way down the hall.

Jiyong doesn’t apologise. He wouldn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what wouldn’t make this worse. Instead he kisses Seungri, pulling back with an apologetic half-smile. His lips are still reddened from the actress's lipstick. Seungri doesn’t smile back.

And maybe if Jiyong doesn’t apologise, maybe if he never shows any remorse or regret, Seungri will finally decide he’s had enough. Maybe he’ll go away and leave Jiyong alone. Maybe he’ll remove himself from Jiyong’s life, because for some reason, Jiyong can’t take care of that himself. But instead, Seungri gives him that same look of understanding, the one he gave Jiyong months ago. Like he knows Jiyong well enough to know what that smile means, to get what Jiyong might've meant to say. Like maybe Jiyong did apologise after all.

Or maybe he’s just willing to settle for this.

Jiyong understands. He’s willing to settle for this too.

 

 

Until, suddenly, he’s not.

 

 

Tonight, Jiyong lets Seungri come over. He wants the four AM that’s out his own windows, with the brighter lights and the luxury high-rise buildings and the floor-to-ceiling glass. He wants some sense of control, some way to reign in the fact that he sees four AM out Seungri’s windows more often than his own these days. He takes Seungri more slowly tonight, more gently, spending the time to explore every centimeter of Seungri’s body, acquainting himself with all the spots that make Seungri shiver and whine and clutch at Jiyong’s hair with trembling hands. And he lets Seungri do the same, lets Seungri run his hands and mouth all over Jiyong’s bare skin, lets himself be exposed and vulnerable for once. Lets Seungri lead. It feels familiar and comfortable, somehow, but new; it feels like coming home to a place he’s never been. And Jiyong thinks, he could get used to this.

He _wants_ to get used to this.

This is what makes his skin crawl once Seungri kisses him and falls asleep, makes his stomach churn and his veins burn like they want to escape the muscles and bones they run over, letting his pounding heart stop beating.

He can’t stop feeling it, Seungri all over him. Seungri imprinted on his body, phantom touches ghosting over it, leaving residual traces of a warmth not entirely from the heat of his skin –

No.

Jiyong can’t breathe.

Arms around his waist –

Fingers gripping his shoulder –

Lips on his mouth –

No.

He needs it to stop.

Jiyong throws the covers off, moving around his room in a frenzy. He stuffs a change of clothes and some toiletries into a bag, sweeping his work off the desk into it as almost an afterthought. He can sleep in his office, shower in the hair studio, text Hanbin to bring him coffee when he comes in. He’s used to that anyway. He spends half his life like that. By now, his office feels more like home than his apartment. It seems almost plausible that Jiyong could stay there forever, avoid the bed that’s now tainted with the memories of Seungri in it, avoid the fact that the four AM view out his window isn’t that different than Seungri’s after all.

He takes one look back at Seungri laying there alone in his bed, his face peaceful where it’s half-buried in Jiyong’s pillow, his naked torso exposed to the moonlight outside. Seungri is so, so beautiful, and Jiyong feels something he can’t place. Or maybe doesn’t want to. He slings his bag over his shoulder and heads out into the heavy August night air before he can give into the urge to take another look back.

Jiyong thinks he might love Seungri. Really, really love Seungri.

And Jiyong doesn’t like to love.

 

 

Jiyong is drunk again tonight. These days, he's drunk a lot. He fucks Seungri harder than he ever has before, words slipping out of his mouth too fast and messy for him to stop them. “I love you so much, Seungri. So much. Only you, Seungri. Only you.” 

He does. He loves Seungri so fucking much, and somewhere along the line, that love became stronger than his pride. His fingers keep finding Seungri’s number in his phone at these horrible hours of the morning, then finding Seungri’s body far too willing to let them do whatever they want. And he always thinks, maybe one more time will be enough. Maybe if he fucks Seungri one more time, that will be all it takes to get himself back under control. Maybe that will finally satisfy the need he has for Seungri’s skin against his. For Seungri’s eyes fixed only on him. For Seungri’s voice saying his name.

It never does.

Jiyong has no control left.

"Do you love me?" he asks, as Seungri digs his nails into Jiyong's shoulders and lets out ragged gasps of pleasure. "You love me, don't you?"

"I do," Seungri moans, trembling under Jiyong. "I love you."

"And you're mine, aren't you?" Seungri's nails are scraping down Jiyong's naked back, leaving stinging scratches in the skin. Jiyong fucks him harder. "Aren't you mine?"

"I'm yours."

Seungri comes with Jiyong's name in his mouth. Jiyong wouldn't have it any other way. Afterwards he wraps himself around Seungri, trying to hold all of Seungri as close as he can, and presses kisses wherever he can reach. “I love you,” he says, over and over, as everything begins to fade out around him. “I love you.”

There aren’t tears glistening in Seungri’s eyes when Jiyong kisses him on the mouth, whispering against his lips, _you will always be mine_. No, it’s just a trick of the light.

 

 

When Jiyong wakes up at half-past five, he’s sober. Seungri’s skin is sweat-sticky where it presses into his, and he feels sick. This time, he knows it's no use blaming the alcohol. Excuses are worthless past the point of no return. He needs to be as far away from Seungri as he can get. He throws on his clothes and stumbles out into the humid morning, hating the way the moisture in the muggy end-of-summer air doesn’t make it any easier to breathe. 

It’s early September. New York Fashion Week is coming up, but Jiyong knows seven days won’t be enough. Eleven-thousand kilometers won’t be enough. He leaves a message for Hyunsuk from the back of a taxi, asking him to send Jiyong to as many Fashion Weeks as he possibly can, as far from Korea as he can get.

 

 

It’s not only Seungri who looks more tired now.

 

 

In the end, Jiyong goes to eight Fashion Weeks. He flies from America to Europe to Australia to Europe again and then back to Asia, ignoring Seungri’s long-distance texts on four different continents.

 _Can I see you soon?_ his phone asks in New York City, and Jiyong almost gets hit by a speeding taxi when he glances down briefly to dismiss the notification.

 _Can you come over tonight?_ it asks in London, and Jiyong flicks the button to silence it with a little more force than necessary as the lights dim for the start of the Vivienne Westwood Red Label show. 

_Are you ignoring me?_ it asks in Sydney.

 _Are you okay?_ it asks in Milan.

 _I’m worried_ , it adds in Paris.

 _Please call me_ , it begs in Budapest.

 _Just let me know if you’re okay_ , it says in Tokyo.

 _Please_ , it repeats in Beijing.

 _Jiyong?_ it pleads as he steps off the plane in Seoul. Jiyong throws it in his bag and wishes it wouldn’t be so terribly inconvenient to change his number.

It doesn’t say anything else after that.

 

 

Back in Seoul, Jiyong loses himself in the rush of re-entering his usual schedule after a month and a half away. He takes on extra projects, making up for lost time, and works himself to the bone to keep up with the deadlines. Hanbin is sent to hospital halfway through November after collapsing from exhaustion on the floor of Jiyong’s office at three o’clock in the morning, and Jiyong specifically requests that a replacement not be found. He almost relishes the last minute crises that arise; a five-hour delay in the flight carrying a Céline dress from Paris to Seoul for a photoshoot, an unfixable coffee stain on the hem of light grey Kimseoryong trousers that are meant to be on an actor in fifteen minutes, a brutally hungover model who can’t get out of bed and has to be replaced three hours before her editorial shoot, all her clothes hastily hemmed and taken in around the waist for her replacement. They give him something to think about, something to occupy him so fully that he doesn’t have any mental energy left to wonder if his phone is going to light up with another message from Seungri ever again.

He tells himself he hopes it doesn’t. That this is what he’s wanted for so long. He doesn’t know if he can forget Seungri, and so he pushes Seungri out of his mind, leaving no space to care anymore.

He doesn’t leave space to realise they’ve fallen back into the cycle. He never broke it after all.

 

 

Two months, sixty-five thousand kilometers and seven texts after that five-thirty awakening, Jiyong breaks and types out two words:

 _Come over_.

 

 

It’s funny what two months can do, Jiyong thinks. For the first time in the year they’ve been doing this, it’s Seungri who gets up to leave when they’re done. 

“No, Seungri. Don’t go.” 

It sounds half-hearted. Jiyong doesn’t mean it to, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t have any energy left. He’s put everything into trying to escape Seungri, and now, finally, he’s the one begging Seungri to stay.

Maybe the word isn’t _funny_. Maybe it’s _ironic_.

For the first time, Seungri ignores him.

Maybe the word is _justified_.

“Don’t go,” Jiyong repeats. He gets up off the bed – this time, he’s the one laying there helpless and begging – and crosses the room to grab Seungri’s hands, keeping him from taking his bag off Jiyong’s desk. “Don’t go.”

Maybe the word is _well-deserved_.

Seungri struggles, and Jiyong is shocked, but he’s not really surprised. It was only a matter of time. They both hit their respective breaking points a long time ago. Seungri’s voice is harsh, a tone he’s never used against Jiyong before, no matter what Jiyong has done. “And why not?”

 _Because I love you_ , Jiyong wants to say. _Because I love you and I need you to stay with me_. But old habits die hard. Jiyong has always liked hurting more than playing, and playing more than loving – he’s never liked to love. So he musters the last of his strength, all his resolve to make Seungri stay, all his desperation, and shapes it into something sharp and pointed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it seem like a choice,” he hisses, and sinks his fingernails into the callused skin of Seungri’s hands. “You’re not allowed to leave.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.” 

When wild animals are backed into a corner, Jiyong knows, they lash out. When they panic, they fight. And Jiyong is panicked. He lets go of Seungri's hands and pushes him back from the door, baring his teeth. “You’re mine, Seungri. You’re mine, and I say you can’t leave.”

“Well, _I’m_ sorry for making it seem like that means anything to me anymore.” 

Jiyong reels, unable to process it, when Seungri shoves him away. He stands there dumbly as Seungri grabs his bag; it knocks all of Jiyong’s papers off the desk, scattering a December magazine and a January photoshoot mock-up and pencil sketches of Dior-clad models in golden cages all over the floor. Seungri steps over them on his way out of the bedroom. Months ago, when Jiyong needed Seungri to fight, Seungri did nothing. And now that Jiyong needs him more than anything, Seungri is pushing him away.

“I don’t believe you.” The snarled and twisted things buried deep inside Jiyong burst to the surface, protruding from his skin in a tangle of razor wire, ready to cut whatever they touch. He follows Seungri to the front door, grabbing his wrist and yanking Seungri back around to face him. “You hang off my every word. I know you, Seungri.”

The look in Seungri’s eyes tells him maybe he _doesn’t_ know Seungri anymore. It’s funny what two months can do.

“I know that when I say I love you, you think that actually means something to me.”

It does.

“When I say I’m sorry, you think it’s for hurting you, when it’s really because you’re so pathetic.”

Jiyong is pathetic.

“When I say it’s only you, you think that’s a good thing, when what I mean is only _you_ are idiotic enough to stick around this long.”

Because Jiyong tried so hard to get rid of him. Because Seungri deserves so much better. 

“I am _everything_ to you, Seungri.”

It’s justified, Jiyong thinks, how this time it’s Seungri who’s already halfway out the door.

“Maybe,” says Seungri. “But since that doesn’t mean anything to you, then I guess you won’t care if I leave. And I know you won’t care if I don’t come back.” 

Jiyong turns away. He can’t watch the door close behind Seungri.

Because Seungri is everything to him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a pinch-hit of a pinch-hit, and thus a product of sheer unedited panic frantically spawned in under 5 days. It became a Devil Wears Prada AU thanks to [this scene](http://tomhiddles.tumblr.com/post/38913768158) from the film and the storm scene from the original fic. That made perfect sense to me at the time. However, the fic can be understood without seeing/reading TDWP.
> 
> The quoted song is [The Hills](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzTuBuRdAyA) by The Weeknd.
> 
> (This is also dedicated to Em, my garbage brain twin and constant partner in crime. ♡)


End file.
